Dirty, Reckless Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 3)
Page 53
“I wasn’t cheating on you.”
“Then why were you at her hotel room in the middle of the night?” I throw my magazine across the room, my façade of calm abandoning me.
“I was—”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand. “Think very carefully before you feed me any more lies.”
“We were talking. Jesus, when did you become so uptight? There’s nothing between us. Not like that. I was with her, but I wasn’t sleeping with her. We had shit to talk about.”
I pull a bottle of pills from between the couch cushions. The thing about packing up someone’s belongings is that you get to see what they have. I found these in the back of the dresser behind his jeans. “What about these? Are you just with these but not taking them? You and the pills are just talking?”
His face pales.
“You promised,” I whisper. “You promised there wouldn’t be any more of this. But it was just another lie. And I can’t do it. I can’t stay and watch you throw your life away. I can’t throw mine away with it.”
“I’m not perfect, okay?” His voice is softer now. Just seeing the pills in my hand seems to have made his anger fade fast. “The last couple of months have fucked my world, and I haven’t handled it well. I get that, but I’m fixing everything now. Let me deal with this, and then we’ll focus on us.”
Colton always has a reason when he relapses, and I’m too tired to hear the excuses this time around. “Is there even an us anymore?”
“I fucking thought so, before you dragged my shit out into the living room.” He shakes his head as he scowls at the bags. “Jesus, Ellie. It’s like I’m some bum you’re kicking out on the street.”
“What did you think we were, Colton? Where did you see this going? You and me?”
He drags a hand through his hair. “You’re just dying for a fight this morning, aren’t you? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t have it in me. I’m fucking tired, and I don’t want to argue about this.”
“If you want even a minute more with your crap in my house, I want to talk about us. I don’t want to argue. I want to talk about our future.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to,” he mutters. “I don’t want to predict the future. I want to live right now.” He slides across the couch and leans in, closing the distance between us until he’s closer than he’s been in weeks. Months.
He brushes
his fingertips along my jaw, sweeps his thumb lightly across the bandage on my forehead, and I close my eyes because my heart aches. I’ve been so lonely. My life is about to change in the biggest way possible. I want to believe he’ll be by my side when I have this baby. I want him to convince me everything’s going to be okay. To reassure me. To be my rock. But he’s never been that. That’s a job he delegated to his best friend from the very beginning. Instead, Colton’s been my thrill. My wild ride. And then he pulled away when I needed him most and he isn’t even that anymore.
“You like to live in the now,” I whisper, opening my eyes to look at him. “And last night, living in the now meant being with her.”
“We didn’t sleep together.” His voice is rough, and for the first time in weeks, I feel like he’s really seeing me when he looks at me. He’s seeing me, and he knows I’m slipping through his fingers. “I swear to you.”
“That’s just it,” I whisper. “I don’t think it matters. Whether you fucked her or not, you’ve left me for her already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The late-night phone calls? The way you barely touch me anymore?”
He looks away, but not fast enough to hide the guilt on his face. “I’m trying to help her get through some complicated shit.”
“The fact that she had your kid and kept him a secret from you for four years? Is that what you’re helping her through?”
He’s quiet for a long time. “This is something I have to do. Don’t confuse secrets for a betrayal. You have to trust me.”
“I’m going through some shit too, Colton.” I blink back tears. “A few months ago, I’d have argued that anything we had to face, we’d face together, but it turns out I was wrong. Because here we are, two people on our way to being strangers. I don’t know what your secrets are.” I press my hand to my stomach. “And you don’t give a damn about mine.”
He flies off the couch and steps away, squeezing the back of his neck with both hands before spinning back to face me. “Like where you were last night? Like why you weren’t in our bed at five a.m., and who you were with? That secret?”
“I was at Jake’s. You know, the place you told me you were spending your night?” Folding my arms, I meet his steely gaze. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Why the fuck were you . . .” He drops his arms to his sides, and his red-rimmed eyes go wide. “Were you with Levi?”
The heartache in his expression makes my stomach drop through the floor. I want to be a robot again. Programmed, mechanical, going through the motions. But I’m falling apart. One piece at a time. I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, trying to hold my broken pieces together. “Tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine,” I whisper, barely able to speak the words around the lump in my throat.